WE WERE THERE – The Canadian Fallen Firefighters Memorial

WE WERE THERE – The Canadian Fallen Firefighters Memorial

Plant architects as Architects

We Were There is a competition-winning collaboration between Artist and Architect to design a public park memorial as a national monument to fire-fighters who have lost their lives in the line of duty. On the Lebreton Flats, across from the War Museum on Wellington Street, the project forms part of Ottawa’s Memorial Route leading to the Parliament Buildings. The competition brief called for a space for the annual ceremony and daily use that reflects the duty of firemen, and is explicitly Canadian. Our scheme is a mis-en-scène of “characters” integrated into a Canadian landscape: a Fireman points to the Wall of the Fallen, an abstracted map of Canada engraved with names; the Lone Pine overlooks the wall of names – the Lone Pine, a Group of Seven icon, is Canada, is us; the Firepole protects the tree, protects us; the Crystalline Landform is a Canadian Landscape; all surrounded by planting that becomes blaze-red. Remembrance, safety, protection, and Canadian identity are all evoked in this interrelationship.


These elements are arranged together with a wedge of soft landscape to create a ceremonial space that is wide at the street, and narrows to a pinch point to frame the space of ceremony, and a quiet Reflection Garden beyond. Approaching by car along the Memorial Route, the characters are introduced in the foreground with the axis pointing to the escarpment and the Parliament Peace Tower beyond framed by the landforms. The Crystalline Landform emerges from the street and ends as a cliff face at the ceremonial area – it is that familiar cut face along the Trans-Canada Highway – here shaped by an abstracted map of Canada engraved with the names of the fallen in geographic “clouds”. On the East, the Soft Wedge Landform with its’ grove of sugar maples rises to frame the ceremonial space and screen the adjacent condominium. At the annual ceremony visitors enter at the South under the fire truck ladder arch to fill the place of ceremony. Each time a name is added to the wall, it will be covered with a black velvet shroud that will be revealed during the ceremony and given to the widow(er). This references the black shrouds worn over the fire-fighters badges when one has fallen. The Reflection Garden tucked into the landscape of the Crystalline Landform and Lone Pine Rock and on the edge of the Tailrace ravine is a network of intimate spaces with benches providing a place of respite for daily use.


The planting is grouped to create distinct forms that support the spatial massing and enclosure intentions of the site, each with a dominant/texture idea and each changing seasonally. The plantings are predominantly green and red, with a dramatic colour change to fiery red/orange to coincide with the Ceremonial Service in September. In the winter, the form of the site is held by evergreens – white pines, winter ferns and sedums – strong branching forms and colour; and snow covered landforms.


Materials: • Fire-fighter: 2 ½ life-size bronze • Firepole: 60’ bronze • Wall of the Fallen: Honed Canadian granite, engraved names, integral lighting and bronze markers – to wayfind for names. • Crystalline Landscape: Natural face granite inter-planted with carpets of low sedums and low growth sumac growing up in the ’cracks’. • Lone Pine: The pine is being transplanted from a natural location, and will be set in the Lone Pine Rock – an outcrop of the Crystalline Landscape • Soft Wedge Landform: Sugar maple trees with low grow blueberry groundcover and tall grasses • Reflection Garden: Hawthorn grove interspersed with low-grow sumac and dogwood shrubs • Pine Grove: White pines under-planted with winter ferns designed as a low point for water collection • Paving: Crushed granite, Algonquin stone paving.

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